EVENTS

One, one, one, one

You know how people who claim the death of Savita Halappanavar was just a sad accident also like to claim that Ireland has a very low maternal death rate? I always wonder, when I see that, if Ireland massages the numbers. Well guess what.

Savita recorded as only maternal death despite five further fatalities

THE death of Savita Halappanavar is the only maternal death recorded by the Central Statistics Office (CSO) last year – although at least five more fatalities were reported by maternity units.

Hmm. The dog ate their homework? The check is in the mail? They had a spot of amnesia?

It has already been reported by the Coombe Maternity Hospital in Dublin that two women died there last year, including a mother of twins.

There were three maternal deaths in Cork University Hospital last year, including two women who died in pregnancy and after giving birth. A new report last year indicated for the first time that some deaths are being missed and the rate of maternal death in Ireland is double the official figure.

And given what we know about why Savita Halappanavar died, it seems likely the figure is even higher than that.

Not to mention the women who died after a visit to the ER in earlier stages of a pregnancy gone wrong. The deaths are recorded as “organ failure”, “internal bleeding”, cardiac arrest, etc. A closer look at the records of deaths of women in the 13-50 age range might reveal an interesting picture – and not only in Ireland. It happens in other countries in the west, including the USA (and not just in the last few years of overt attacks on women’s reproductive rights).

I should add that those causes of death usually are, in fact, the ultimate causes of death – but primary cause of THOSE conditions is the pregnancy. Many countries have no requirement to record death statistics specific to maternity – so the cause of death is recorded correctly – but misleadingly – to the secondary fatal condition caused by pregnancy.

If I had a ton of money, I’d start a publicity campaign to fight the perception it is a risk-free choice for women faced with an unplanned pregnancy to just carry the conceptus to term and put it up for adoption. Pregnancy is risky. There is no way of knowing before who will suffer grave complications and who will have a relatively easy time. NO woman comes through a pregnancy with no damage or scars – from mild (but still painful) to severe. SOme women suffer really serious damage. All lose earning potential and (if still teenagers) over hald never finish school and face a lifetime of poverty in addition to whatever physical harm they suffer from pregnancy.
Pregnancy is fine if a woman makes an informed and willing choice to become pregnant and stay pregnant. She has weighed the risks (if she knows them – many don’t- and many are never told, not even willing women with apparently supportive OBs) – and those women at least have chosen to take the risks to their health and their earning power. But, in y opinion, this attempt by conservatives to FORCE women to risk their health, their futures and even their lives and then pretending that it is a risk free mere “inconvenience” that only an immoral murderer could say NO to is criminal. It is criminal.
We need to fight that perception that adoption is somehow a choice without nine months of hard physical and emotional cost to a living breathing young woman in between that lying billboard and the adoption paper signing.

Yes, SallyStrange, exactly. And a long, hard physical slog before the climatic labor and delivery.
I am a mother. I chose to be. Damned if I would go through any of it because FORCED to do it. Fuck, no!
It makes me so angry that young women today, even more than in my generation (apparently the only generation that ever had any semblance of briefly protected “choice”- though even that was an illusion for many) are increasingly being forced into unwanted pregnancies. I cannot understand why the dozens of anti-choice laws being passed all over the country have not caused eruptions of mass protests in the streets.